How often do we really get snow this late in the season?

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Another week and another winter like storm is expected to impact much of Minnesota and Wisconsin with wind, rain, freezing rain, sleet, and snow. But it’s April, this shouldn’t be happening right? Well, unfortunately for folks that are just done with winter like conditions at this point in the year, it does happen…and ALMOST EVERY YEAR.

Of our 143 years of records in the metro, we have seen at least a dusting of snow on April 13th or later 69 times. That’s nearly half the time!  If you include a trace of snow in those totals (meaning flakes were recorded actually falling, but nothing measurable accumulated), we have seen snow 110 out of our 143 years of records. That’s more than 75 percent of the time. So yes, it does snow in April almost every year.

Now, I understand that the actual AMOUNT of snow we have already seen and could see again over the weekend is a bit more unusual. It’s already the 13th snowiest April in our 143 years of records. But, we are no stranger to these very cold and snowy Aprils. We have seen two of these in the 21st century alone; just five years ago in 2013, and 11 years before that in 2002.

But if you look back on overall temperatures for the month of April, we have a pretty cold April about every five years or so. Well below average temperatures were seen in the metro in 2014, 2013, 2008, 2002, 1996, 1995, 1994… etc. So It’s not exactly something new, but many of us choose to remember the very warm Aprils like 2017, 2016, and 2012.